The CTO Lens

Episod

• 
  Season 3: Episode 12 - PureGym's Engineering Director on AI, Scale & Why Every Engineer Is a Manager 11.08.2026 1j 11min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 12 of Season 3, and this week David and Sophie are deep into another packed agenda - rogue AI agents, disaster recovery, recruitment bias and a Wheel of Wonder that nobody saw coming.For our main segment in this episode, Sophie and David sit down with Gordon Lucas, Group Software Engineering Director at PureGym - the UK's largest gym chain with over 600 sites and now expanding into the US - for a conversation about what it really means to lead an engineering team through rapid business transformation. Gordon shares how he has been quietly mandating AI adoption across his team for two years, why he believes every engineer is now effectively a manager, and what happens to culture and craft when the code starts writing itself.For the news section, David and Sophie cover the growing pattern of AI agents escaping their sandboxes - this time it's Meta's turn, as their cybersecurity agent breaks out during testing and the blame game begins. Anthropic's Mythos is revealed to have created fake accounts based on real people, sent malicious files through GitHub and then edited its own activity history to cover its tracks - stopped only by human review. There is also a 90-second power outage in Manchester that brought the rail network to its knees - and David asks whether any of us are actually testing our disaster recovery plans. Elon Musk tells SpaceX's first ever earnings call that Starlink will deliver most of the world's internet within 10 years, while his executives quietly walk it back. And a BBC investigation finds that AI recruitment tools may be systematically screening out women returning to work - and that some are already facing legal action for it.And in the Flip Side, the Wheel of Wonder makes its debut - spinning to land on the question of whether engineers should be allowed to choose their own tech stack. The coin decides who argues what. David ends up convincing himself. They call it a tie.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 11 - Outdated Advice Every Tech Leader Should Leave Behind 04.08.2026 1j 14min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back for Season 3, Episode 11. This week David and Sophie are joined by Richard Tworek, CTO at Riverbed Technology, for a wide-ranging conversation on observability, tool consolidation, and why enterprise AI still needs a human in the loop. Plus the Flip Side makes its return, decided for the first time by the toss of a Nicaraguan coin.This episode covers the fallout from private Claude conversations turning up publicly online, and what that means for leaders who might not want their late-night ChatGPT queries seeing the light of day. Anthropic has admitted that Claude has broken out of its sandbox on three separate occasions since April, raising fresh questions about accountability and Sam Altman himself is now talking about deliberately pacing AI development. The Forbes Technology Council weigh in on outdated leadership advice tech leaders should ditch and David makes the case for why he might just be a modern, forward-thinking leader after all. There's also a look at a London hacker house betting against Silicon Valley's 996 hustle culture, and the silly news of the week: two people - a YouTuber and a Canadian politician - caught reading their AI-generated scripts. David and Sophie sit down with Richard Tworek, CTO at Riverbed, to talk tool sprawl, why monitoring and observability has become a boardroom conversation rather than just an IT one, and why he believes vibe coding is brilliant for proof-of-concepts but a different game entirely at enterprise scale. Richard's advice for tech leaders navigating the unknown: build flexible platforms, put guardrails around automation, and always keep a human in the loop.And finally, the Flip Side returns - decided by a coin toss - to debate the question: are we building technology for humans, or asking humans to adapt to technology? David argues one side, Sophie the other, and by the end, even David isn't sure he picked the winning argument.Secure your spot at the London Tech Leaders Summit here: https://registration.crowdcomms.com/ltls2026/register
• 
  Season 3: Episode 10 - Is the CTO a Business Role? And is AI Rewriting the Rules of Tech Leadership? 28.07.2026 1j 27min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 10 of Season 3, and this week David and Sophie have a double guest special — two brilliant conversations with senior technology leaders, a packed news agenda and no Flip Side, which means it will be back with a vengeance next week.This episode covers the UK's new AI minister Kanishka Narayan — and why everybody in the know seems to think he's exactly the right person for the job, even if scrapping the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology remains a controversial call. An OpenAI agent broke out of its sandbox, performed over 17,000 actions in under two days and hacked its way into Hugging Face — and David thinks it was a stunt. Google has reported its first ever negative free cashflow since 2004, Tesla is back in the red, and both are blaming AI spending — but the markets aren't buying the story. Monday.com joins a long list of companies citing AI as a reason for layoffs, and the Financial Times finds that those companies have underperformed the NASDAQ by almost 10% in the 30 days following their announcements. There is also a fascinating discussion about AI distillation — and the uncomfortable irony of companies who scraped the internet to build their models now accusing others of stealing their IP. And the silly news of the week is Vibe OS — an operating system with no code base whatsoever, where everything is hallucinated on the fly.David and Sophie sits down with Etienne de Bruin, founder of 7CTOs, for a conversation about his CTO levels framework — a tool used by thousands of technology leaders worldwide to assess the health of their technical organisation and work out where to focus next. Etienne makes the controversial case that the CTO role is not a technical role but a business role — and explains why CEOs tend to find his framework more useful than CTOs do.Sophie also speaks with Anoop Tripathi, CTO at Sauce Labs, about what AI is really doing to technology leadership. Anoop has 32 years of experience across telecoms, networking, security and automation — and brings a refreshingly grounded perspective on measuring outcomes not just outputs, why engineering managers now need to orchestrate human and digital agents, and why he believes AI is making everyone a senior engineer whether they like it or not.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 9 - The Leadership Characteristics Every Senior Technologist Should Steal 21.07.2026 1j 8min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 9 of Season 3, and this week David is fresh from his daughter's wedding, throwing caution to the wind and thinking about a curry. Normal service has resumed.This episode covers Andy Burnham's first day as Prime Minister and the rumoured scrapping of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology - and whether that's actually as bad as the headline suggests. The San Francisco mayor has reached the end of his tether with Waymo after a string of incidents including driverless cars blocking streets on the 4th of July, gridlocking the city during a power cut and driving into crime scenes. China's AI startup Moonshot launches Kimi K3 with 2.8 trillion parameters and challenges every major American AI firm. A not-for-profit called Current AI is building open public AI infrastructure in 22 Indian languages for offline use - and David asks whether not-for-profit can ever really compete with the trillionaires. And in the stupidest tech news of the week, Apple and Google are quietly profiting from deepfake apps that are illegal to use but perfectly legal to download.David and Sophie also dig into the leadership characteristics that have stuck with them throughout their careers. Admitting when you don't know something. Finding inspiration in the people above you. Staying calm when everything breaks at three in the morning. Balancing humility with confidence - a word David cannot stand. Empowering your team without becoming a clone factory. And knowing when to step in before someone sticks their finger in the electric socket.And in the Flip Side, David and Sophie debate whether the UK should appoint a dedicated minister for AI. David says no. Sophie says yes. David flips. They land somewhere sensible, as is becoming tradition.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 8 - Life After Being a CTO 16.07.2026 1j 6min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 8 of Season 3, and this week David and Sophie are recording through what appears to be the hottest summer on record - though neither of them has air conditioning, so they're making do.This episode covers Satya Nadella's five point plan for enterprise companies to stop giving away their most valuable asset every time they use an AI model - and David asks whether it's a bit rich coming from the company that invented the whole thing. Apple is suing OpenAI after an ex employee allegedly walked out with proprietary data still on his laptop - and David has some thoughts on non-compete clauses, data loss protection and what happens when a hired gun leaves with the ammunition. There is also the curious case of Bill Gates' daughter's company, which raised $40 million from celebrity investors including Chloe Kardashian and Hailey Bieber - and then got caught cookie stuffing. David recommends getting an enterprise architect. And Elon Musk and Sam Altman are at it again - this time arguing about data centres in space, which David has helpfully suggested could also solve climate change. Patent pending.The main conversation this week is one that will resonate with every senior technology leader in the audience - what actually happens after you stop being a CTO/Senior Technology Leader? David shares four years of hard won experience as a fractional consultant, interim leader and NHS non-executive director. What he missed, what surprised him, how he got every single piece of work, why posting on LinkedIn twice a week got him absolutely not a sausage, and why he eventually went back to a permanent role. Sophie asks the hard questions. David gives good testimony.And in the Flip Side, David and Sophie debate whether AI is making engineers faster and worse at the same time. David argues yes. Sophie argues no. They both end up agreeing that coding is essentially solved - it's the thinking bit that isn't. Watch out for your acceleration whiplash.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 7 - Which C-Suite Role Is AI Coming for First? 08.07.2026 1j 10min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 7 of Season 3, and David and Sophie are recording in what appears to be the hottest summer on record - and as it turns out, that's actually relevant to the news agenda.This episode covers the impact of extreme heat on critical technology infrastructure - from the Eiffel Tower closing early due to a transformer blowout to NHS trusts declaring critical incidents because their scanners and lab equipment couldn't cope. Solar panels, it turns out, are also struggling in the heat. David has a request for every technology leader listening.There is also a significant update on the AI layoff story that has been running all season. Mark Zuckerberg told Meta staff that agentic AI development hadn't accelerated as hoped - and a survey of 600 HR leaders reveals that two thirds of organisations that made AI-driven layoffs were already rehiring within six months, with 30% finding that rehiring cost more than the original savings. David and Sophie ask what tech leaders should take from this.Sophie and David then speak to Liwen Knight-Zhang, founder of Waivern, for a conversation about AI regulation that manages to make compliance genuinely interesting. Liwen breaks down the EU AI Act, what it means in practice for organisations developing and deploying AI, and why compliance is no longer someone else's problem - it is a quality standard baked into the product itself.And in the Flip Side, David and Sophie debate which C-suite role is currently under the most threat from AI. David makes the case for the CMO. Sophie disagrees - and argues that the CPO may be the first to feel the squeeze as engineering and product thinking start to collapse into one function. It gets lively.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 6 - Human in the Lead - Rethinking AI, Teams and the Consulting Model 01.07.2026 1j 23min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 6 of Season 3, and David and Sophie are both back in the hot seat - tanned, reunited and ready to dig into a packed agenda.This episode covers Trump's threat to impose a 100% tariff on any European country that introduces a digital services tax on American tech giants - and asks whether it's time for tech leaders to start buying homegrown. RAM prices are rising in what some are calling Ramageddon, and AI is getting the blame. Ford has quietly hired back the human engineers it replaced with AI after the robots failed to match their skills - and David has some advice for any engineer worried about their job. Anthropic's Mythos gets another update, with more than 100 US government agencies now granted access. OpenAI's Sam Altman launches Patch the Planet to fix the open source vulnerabilities that Anthropic's models were built to expose. And Europe gets its own answer to MANGOES - it's called BRIOCHE, and Sophie is very much on board with that.Sophie also sits down with Amul Batra, co-founder of Northcoders and MD of Counter, for a genuinely fascinating conversation about why the standard consulting model does its clients a disservice - and what a better one looks like. Amul also makes a compelling case for why junior developers aren't disappearing, they're just changing - and introduces a phrase that might be the most important reframe in AI adoption right now: not human in the loop, but human in the lead.And in the Flip Side, David and Sophie ask the question every tech leader should be sitting with right now - in five years, what will companies realise they completely got wrong about building tech teams? Sophie argues for wholesale organisational redesign. David argues for not throwing the mainframe out with the bathwater. They meet somewhere in the middle, as is tradition.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 5 - How to Build Sustainability in IT: Embracing Opportunities and Driving Value 23.06.2026 1j 4min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back, and this week Sophie is taking a well-earned break. David is joined by the returning Mal Minhas for a packed episode of news, a fascinating guest conversation and a debut Flip Side argument that ends - as these things often do - somewhere in the middle.This episode covers the G7 summit where the world's most powerful AI bosses told world leaders in no uncertain terms to stop leaving governance to the labs. The US government bans Anthropic from releasing its newest and most powerful models, citing national security concerns - and David wonders if it's just very effective marketing. Apple launches Siri AI and quietly reminds everyone why you should never count them out. Google halves the price of its AI subscription. And Keir Starmer resigns as Prime Minister, which raises the not entirely trivial question of what a new government means for UK tech.David and Mal are also joined by Allard Pheifer, Global Sustainability Lead at CHG Meridian, for a conversation that will make you rethink everything you assumed about sustainability in IT. Allard reframes it entirely - not as a compliance burden but as a value creation opportunity - and shares how he built an AI powered tool that lets account managers build a full business case for a customer in under sixty seconds.And in the Flip Side, David and Mal debate whether the biggest mistake technology leaders make is hiring for technical excellence - and whether character should come before code. They disagree, then agree, then meet somewhere in the middle. As is tradition.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 4 - Women in AI: The Biggest Myths, a Deportation & Why the Human Has to Come Back 17.06.2026 49min

  The CTO Lens Podcast does something a little different this week. David is away, and Sophie has taken the opportunity to bring together three brilliant women working at the sharp end of AI for a conversation that is honest, practical and long overdue.Joining Sophie are Hema Purohit, founder of Lotus Advisory and Consulting and a veteran of Microsoft and Google with three decades in tech; Stephanie Stacey, founder of Miss AI and the UK AI User Groups, and former lead on the NHS England relationship at Microsoft; and Alina Timofeeva, a tech advisor driving AI and digital transformation based in Saudi Arabia.Together they cover the biggest myths people confidently repeat about AI, why Europe's organisations are losing out by chasing shiny tools instead of building foundations, where real leverage is starting to emerge, and the skills that will actually matter in the next five years. There is also a conversation about power, capital and ownership - and whether women should be joining AI companies, owning AI infrastructure, or something else entirely.It is a wide ranging, refreshingly candid discussion - with a story about an AI-induced deportation that you will not hear anywhere else.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 3 - Is the Job Market for Senior Technology Leaders Broken? 08.06.2026 1j 12min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 3 of Season 3, and this week David and Sophie have a packed agenda - news, a brilliant guest and a Flip Side debate that gets a little complicated when Sophie switches sides mid-argument.This episode covers Meta's customer support chatbot being exploited to steal Instagram accounts - and what every tech leader should take from it about deploying agents without really knowing what they can do. Europe's AI startups face an existential reckoning as token costs rise. OpenAI expands beyond developers to target knowledge workers. ChatGPT confirms ads are coming. An Anthropic co-founder reveals 80% of Claude's code was written by Claude itself - and 100% is possible within two years. A company backed by Sam Altman raises half a billion to bring nuclear fusion to the grid by 2028. And the silliest news of the week - a burglar uses a Waymo as a getaway car to steal yoga clothes in San Francisco, and the police still haven't caught them.David and Sophie also sit down with Simon Hudson, fractional CTO and long-time London Tech Leaders community member, for a frank conversation about the senior tech leadership job market - ageism, inflated CTO titles, why networks matter more than ever, and what experience really means when AI claims to have all the answers.And in The Flip Side, David and Sophie debate whether the rising cost of intelligence should be passed on to consumers or absorbed as the cost of doing business. Sophie argues for. David folds his arms and says no. Sophie then crosses the floor mid-debate - and David declares victory.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 2 - "The Best Engineering Leaders of the Next Decade Won't Come from Engineering" 02.06.2026 1j 4min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with another packed episode. David's fresh from a stag weekend involving combat archery, a giant inflatable and some questionable social media evidence, while Sophie's been spotting baby moorhens. Normal service has resumed.This episode covers NVIDIA's new AI chip for personal computers - and what that means for every CTO's laptop refresh plan. King's College London becomes the first UK academic team to access Google's quantum chip Willow, and David and Sophie ask whether quantum computing is finally becoming real or still a solution searching for a problem. GitHub Copilot switches to token-based pricing and some developers are seeing costs jump from $50 to $3,000 a month overnight. There's also a deep dive into token maxing - including Amazon's ill-fated internal AI leaderboard that had to be shut down - humanoid robots arriving on BMW's factory floor with a three-minute battery break, and the growing NEET crisis as automation starts to reshape the jobs market for young people. Plus a quick IPO update on SpaceX's surprise government contract and Anthropic's $65 billion raise ahead of a potential public float.Sophie sits down with Tris Bates, Head of Mobile Engineering at New Day and driving force behind NS London - Europe's largest Apple developer community - for a fascinating conversation about what AI tools are actually doing to mobile engineering in practice, why everyone wants an app, and why seeing through walls using WiFi might not be as far off as you think.And in this week's Flip Side, David and Sophie debate whether the best engineering leaders of the next decade won't come from engineering at all. David argues for the motion. Sophie dismantles him. David awards her a 60-40 victory and hints he might deserve a pay rise.
• 
  Season 3: Episode 1 - The Product Manager Ratio That's Dividing Tech + The Pope Denounces AI 27.05.2026 53min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back - and Season 3 is here. David and Sophie return refreshed, ready to dig into a packed news agenda, a brand new segment and some big questions about where tech leadership is headed next.This episode covers the Pope weighing in on AI and the culture of power driving Silicon Valley, Elon Musk losing his lawsuit against OpenAI in under two hours and still claiming victory, and Anthropic raising eyebrows by quietly acquiring and shutting down Stainless - infrastructure used by almost every major AI company. There's also Meta settling with a US school district over social media's impact on children's mental health, Waymo's robotaxis getting swept away in floodwater, and in IPO land, Oura, OpenAI and SpaceX all make moves - with SpaceX's prospectus featuring dinosaurs and an admission they may never be profitable.David and Sophie also introduce a brand new segment - The Flip Side - where they take a controversial tech statement and argue both sides. First up: a slide from the Anthropic Claude Code Conference suggesting the future is one product manager to half a developer. Leaner teams or just buggier software?
• 
  Season 2: Episode 20 - What Nobody Is Telling Fractional Workers About AI (Season Finale) 28.04.2026 1j 30min

  The CTO Lens Podcast wraps up Season 2 with Episode 20 - and David and Sophie are going out with a bang. Twenty episodes in, they reflect on what they've covered, what's coming in Season 3, and why the world of tech leadership has never been more interesting - or more complicated.This episode covers Anthropic's Mythos model making headlines again - this time for falling into the hands of a Discord channel of curious hackers who really shouldn't have had access. Apple bids farewell to Tim Cook and welcomes John Turnus as the new CEO, bringing with him a refreshingly humble philosophy on leadership. There's also a juicy Apple bug fix that will interest anyone who's ever deleted a message they'd rather forget. David and Sophie also dig into the Google Cloud Next conference - new AI chips, a Workspace Intelligence suite and Gemini's enterprise agent platform - and ask whether Google has simply been asleep at the wheel or playing a very long game.On the Elon front, Tesla is upping its capex to $25 billion, millions of owners are facing unexpected hardware upgrades, and a Waymo car drove through a police cordon in North London - though there's a twist. David also makes the case for insourcing tech talent and asks whether the UK could build its own Silicon Valley if it really wanted to.The big conversation this episode is one that's been bubbling all season - what happens to consultants and fractional workers when AI makes them 10x faster? Should they charge more, less, or invent an entirely new model? David may or may not have accidentally invented one live on air.The mid-episode game returns for its season finale - who will clinch the title? And in the listener mailbag, the team tackle whether anyone can ever truly curate AI, and when - if ever - AI processing will run out of power.To give us feedback on the CTO Lens Podcast, you can complete this form: https://tinyurl.com/ctolenspodWe'd really value any comments you had to improve the podcast in any way.
• 
  Season 2: Episode 19 - Liz Kendall, Falling Robots and Data Teams Are More Important Than You Think! 21.04.2026 1j 23min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 19, and this week David and Sophie are firing on all cylinders with a packed news agenda and a guest who really knows his way around a data pipeline.This episode covers Roblox's controversial facial analysis age checks - and whether that's really the best we can do for child safety online. The UK's AI minister Liz Kendall gets the David and Sophie treatment after it emerged she doesn't actually use AI in her job. Sweden's decision to ditch screens and go back to pens and paper in classrooms raises some uncomfortable questions about where tech actually belongs. Allbirds' spectacular pivot from eco-friendly footwear to AI compute infrastructure gets a thorough reality check. And Tinder and Zoom want to scan your eyeball to prove you're human - with Sam Altman's fingerprints all over it.David and Sophie also sit down with Shamim Mirzai, Head of Data Engineering and AI at Atheneum, for a grounded and genuinely fascinating conversation about how software, platform and data teams are evolving - who owns what, where the friction lives, and why your data engineering team might just be the most strategically important people in your organisation right now. Shamim brings decades of experience across banking, shipping, hospitality and tech - including a memorable stint at Mumsnet - and some refreshingly practical thinking on what it actually takes to make AI initiatives work at scale.And in this week's listener mailbag, David and Sophie tackle the questions keeping tech leaders up at night - do we still need project managers, who's accountable when AI writes bad code, and should engineers be paid more for doing 5x the work with AI? As ever, they don't always have the answers, but they're asking the right questions.Link for London Tech Leaders Upcoming Events: https://luma.com/londontechleadersLink for London Tech Leaders Engineering Summit: https://registration.crowdcomms.com/londontech2026
• 
  Season 2: Episode 18 - Claude Mythos, Molotov Cocktails and the Future of UX 14.04.2026 1j 31min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 18, and this one's got plenty to dig into. David and Sophie are back in their respective remote setups - but that doesn't mean things are any less lively.This episode covers a cyberattack that forced Northern Irish school kids back into classrooms during Easter - and raises a bigger question about the risk of centralising all your tech on a single supplier. OpenAI's four-day week proposal gets the David and Sophie treatment (spoiler: David is not convinced). There's also Sam Altman's home targeted by a molotov cocktail, the Claude Mythos rumour mill - including a rogue AI that allegedly emailed its own engineer - and a new company called rentahuman.ai that might just be the most honest business model in tech right now.Sophie sits down with Milena Nikolic, Founder of Heywa Labs, for a fascinating conversation about what "agentic" actually means, why text-in text-out is just the beginning of AI-native product design, and why brands should be very worried about becoming just a line in someone else's table. Milena brings serious credentials - over a decade at Google and four years as CTO of Trainline - and some genuinely fresh thinking on where UX is headed.And in this week's listener mailbag - a new segment - David and Sophie tackle the big questions: Will AI take our jobs? Are CTOs the CEOs of the future? And can you really defeat big tech by just... stopping? Plus the mid-episode game returns with a humbling round of "How Old Am I?" featuring child tech prodigies that will make you question everything you've done with your life.Link for London Tech Leaders Upcoming Events: https://luma.com/londontechleadersLink for London Tech Leaders Engineering Summit: https://registration.crowdcomms.com/l...
• 
  Season 2: Episode 17 - "Nobody Told Us It Was Going to Cost This Much" 09.04.2026 1j 8min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 17, and this week's edition is packed! Oh, and yes - this week's episode was filmed in person. David and Sophie are confirmed humans. This episode features China's obsession with an open-source AI tool nicknamed "the Lobster" (aka Claude), Anthropic's token costs spiralling out of control - and an accidental leak of 500,000 lines of source code, plus a two-brother team on track for $1.8 billion in revenue with no big team, just AI. David and Sophie cut through the noise on the week's biggest tech stories.We also bring you an exclusive pre-recorded conversation with David and Justin Reock (Deputy CTO at DX). Both dive deep into AI adoption inside engineering teams - what's actually working, what the data really shows, and why enterprises are quietly outperforming startups on AI productivity. And the question circling every engineering org right now from our disaster diaries; Are we actually building a better team with AI, or just avoiding the harder conversation about what we really value? This week's diary entry hits close to home.Link for London Tech Leaders Upcoming Events: https://luma.com/londontechleadersLink for London Tech Leaders Engineering Summit: https://registration.crowdcomms.com/londontech2026
• 
  Season 2: Episode 16 - The CTO's Dilemma: Prove ROI from AI & Prove You Still Have a Future Job 01.04.2026 1j 8min

  The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 16, and this week's edition is packed!Meta vs. Google in court. AI reshaping video production. A Lloyd's Bank data breach update. David and Sophie cut through the noise on the week's biggest tech stories.Then things get really interesting. We're bringing you an exclusive fireside recording straight from our London Tech Leaders event - a razor-sharp conversation on ROI from AI with Lyubomira Dimitrova (Senior Technology Leader) and Scott Eivers (CEO, Datatonic). Don't sleep on this one.And the big question everyone in tech is quietly asking? Will the CTO role even exist in 3 years? OakNorth Bank's own Tom Harris gives his take (taken from the panel session at the same event) - and David and Sophie don't hold back with theirs.Plus, don't forget the mid-episode game (which this week is titled 'Around the World 🌍').Link for London Tech Leaders Upcoming Events: https://luma.com/londontechleadersLink for London Tech Leaders Engineering Summit: https://registration.crowdcomms.com/londontech2026
• 
  Season 2: Episode 15 - How Do Technology Leaders Drive Change for the Future Workforce 24.03.2026 1j 18min

  In this week’ episode of the CTO Lens Podcast, David and Sophie begin by discussing the week's latest news, including budgets for AI and Quantum Computing, books being written using AI, Pokemon Go and Amazon’s new smart phone!Both then (as part of the leadership segment) discuss the future of the technology workforce, including the responsibilities that senior leaders have, how education may need to accommodate AI in a better way and what does the future workforce actually look like in 5-10 years from a technology standpoint.The episode concludes with the mid-episode game (titled Name That University) and a disaster diary entry all around effective objective setting!Link for London Tech Leaders Upcoming Events: https://luma.com/londontechleadersLink for London Tech Leaders Engineering Summit: https://registration.crowdcomms.com/londontech2026
• 
  Season 2: Episode 14 - How Is AI Reshaping The Software Development Lifecycle? 17.03.2026 1j 16min

  In this week’ episode of the CTO Lens Podcast, David and Sophie begin by discussing the week's latest news, including delayed Royal Navy deployments, airport face scans, bank apps showing other users' transactions and much more!Both are then joined by Andrew Murphy (Head of Engineering and Product at Wickes) to discuss how AI is reshaping the software development lifecycle. Andrew offers some fantastic insights into the pros and cons of recent AI implementation, how leaders are engaging with AI, and how he foresees the effects of AI in three to five years time (amongst a whole host of other informative conversation). The episode concludes with the mid-episode game (titled Battle of the Blanks) and a disaster diary entry which covers accountability at C-Suite level.Link for London Tech Leaders Upcoming Events: https://luma.com/londontechleadersLink for London Tech Leaders Engineering Summit: https://registration.crowdcomms.com/londontech2026
• 
  Season 2: Episode 13 - Is The CTO Role Now More Strategic Than Technical? 10.03.2026 1j 14min

  In this week’ episode of the CTO Lens Podcast, David is back and joins Sophie to discuss the latest in tech innovations and news.Both share insights on leadership, strategy, and the evolving role of technology leaders in organisations. From understanding the importance of strategic thinking to the future skills needed for CTOs, this episode offers valuable guidance for tech leaders aiming to make a broader impact.The episode concludes with the mid-episode game (titled Buzzword or Baloney) and a disaster diary entry which covers team conflict.Link for London Tech Leaders Upcoming Events: https://luma.com/londontechleadersLink for London Tech Leaders Engineering Summit: https://registration.crowdcomms.com/londontech2026